But it's still on the list . . .

May 2008

05/13/2008

Ladybug is into the final trimester now. The kid is big. Bigger than the last one. Almost as big as the first one. And showing no signs of slowing down. Sciatica has taken hold, and it's all sort of a mess, really. She's planning on working until the end of July, but, frankly, I don't know if she'll be able to make it that long. I'd rather she didn't. If her doc puts her on bed rest, she can pretty well tell her company that she's not coming to the office any longer. It probably won't come to that.

I'm getting ready for a nice month long break from work. Lotus starts kindergarten right in the middle of all of that, so that'll be an adventure. Tesla will be happy to have a baby in the house, I'm sure. At least right up until she discovers it means less attention from Mommy. She's sort of a Mommy hog.

My parents are really looking forward to it as well. We'll all be home, so they can come over whenever, and play with the older kids while Ladybug deals with the bambino.

It's all scary as well, of course. We're going to a single income for at least a year. We'll have financial support, of course, but there's other issues to focus on. We'll be looking for ways to economize around the house, and try to budget ourselves better. We're stuck with the cars we have, of course, but I may be able to start taking the bus or something, if I don't have to worry about getting the kids from daycare.

Then there's the fact that no one on my side if the family has any idea what the dynamics of three kids are like. I hear stories. Plus, the parents are officially out numbered now.

05/12/2008

On Saturday morning (yes, I work 6 days a week now), I got this e-mail (replicated here in full) from the project's director, in response to an e-mail I sent out detailing some issues with our project:

We need to get the
issues in Train resolved first. Who is working on these issues from the dev
team?

Excuse me? Who's the director here? Me or you? I suppose the question could have been directed at his counterpart on the contractors team, but he sent this fantastic one line note to me an hour later (with a CC back to original director):

I am going out now so
please follow-up with [Team Lead A] & [Team Lead B].

Again, I have to ask, who is running this project? Me? Because if it is, where's the fucking money? And why can't I fire the 3/4 of the dev team who consistently fuck up? The ones who contribute little or nothing to the project? The ones who actually cause more issues than they resolve? The ones who wrapped perfectly good checked exceptions inside of useless unchecked exception because it was "easier" (for you non-programmers, it's like wrapping a hammer in a feather pillow - completely ruins the tool for what it's supposed to be used for)? Why can't I impose process? Why can't I demand the "A game" from the other teams?

05/08/2008

Didn't I see this movie already? Whiny 20-something idiots running around getting lost with a video camera? I'm sure I did. I think it might have been called the Blair Witch Project.

For the entire movie, Ladybug and I were hoping Hog, or Hap, or Hud, or whatever the camera guy's name was would be killed just so we wouldn't have to listen to his moronic voice-over any more. Yes, we all have emotionally stunted, needy, jerkoff friends like that who are good for little more than getting us all killed with their incompetence. I stopped calling mine some years ago. And then you kill the only character I gave a crap about, Milena, or whatever, the one who told Haphudhog he's a fucking idiot with his Superman commentary.

And you want to talk about an idiot plot? Here's a dollar's worth of free advice, hipsters: when the rats are running from something, you don't fucking stop to figure out what it is. All you're doing is proving that you're dumber than a rat. If you've just been attacked by a large bug, and have found refuge behind a stout door with a viable water and air supply, what do you do? Go back out into the dark? Or hold up until morning? I guess if you're a love-struck moron, you go back out in the dark. Miranda, or whatever her name was, the cool one, she was dead anyway from that bite, with no real medical attention (and you didn't even think to try to get her some - even after you ran into the military). Just freaking stick it out. Hell, you were underground as well. If we've learned anything from recent history, it's that bombs, however huge, don't kill people hiding in caves very effectively.

When Hoghaphud turned the camera on himself and said, "If this is the last thing you see . . .", I said, "then thank your lucky stars the moron is dead!" I cheered when he got eaten.

And this magic camera of theirs. Night vision? A floodlight? And with a battery and casing that will last for hours of recording and being knocked around, dropped, chewed and still record? Yes, please, sign me up for one of them. I can't get a battery for a video camera that lasts for 12 hours sitting in the camera doing nothing. You're running a near IR sensor and a floodlight and recording all night long and into the morning. Suspension of disbelief indeed. We were waiting for them to engage the "alien blood trail detector," or "damsel in distress sensor," or, my personal preference, the "turn-this-into-a-movie-I-want-to-watch-o-meter."

And what was the point of the first half hour? If this is suppsed to be a military recovery, why are we subjected to 30 minutes of MTV's The Real World? Apart from making me loathe Hudhaphog and wanting him to die in the first attack. And explaining why the main idiot wants to get all his friends killed to save some bit of tail he had a one day fling with.

OK, yes, I'd go back in to save my kids or my wife. But I wouldn't take a video camera. I'd take weapons. Loot an electronics store for a phone battery? Hell no, loot a gun store for some bad ass shotguns or automatic rifles. And then steal a car.

05/07/2008

Anyone who's been reading this for the last couple of months knows that I work with, and let's be polite, Gumbies. Here are my coworkers in action:

If The Team Leads Were Doctors

Yesterday, I went to lunch with some of my fellow team members. I got to talking with one of the few competent devs on this project, a lovely young lady, and Spurs fan (she's young, she'll learn eventually). One of the Gumbies is her team lead. We got to chatting about the deployment date for our application. Our current deploy date is the 19th. I don't have high hopes of it. But I am doing my best to meet the date, because that's what I do. It's OK to doubt the date. If you're an adult, you are probably capable of being trained. And we've all been trained on this project to doubt the date using simple repetition techniques. But we're also responsible for being ready for the date, just in case.

Not so for Gumby Team Lead. She told her team members that the 19th probably wasn't going to be the date. Oh, sure, officially, it is, but it probably won't be, she said. She took pains to stress that. So now, her team doesn't think they have to meet the deadline. This dev I went to lunch with was confident that the 19th wasn't the date. It's not surprising, really, since Gumby's team has the largest number of chronic deadline flaunters on the project. Most of her devs couldn't meet a deadline if you threatened them with a chainsaw. And now we know why: deadlines mean nothing to them, because their Gumby Team Lead has made it clear that there are absolutely no consequences for missing a deadline, whether it's a daily schedule or a project timeline. The 19th? Don't worry about it, it doesn't really matter.

We need to send her for brain surgery. And I really want to be the anesthetician.

05/06/2008

05/05/2008

Friday was another banner day for me. I got yelled at again. This time for having the gall to say the production environment was ready. Well, it is. I really can't help it if the data in the DB is wrong, or the ESB service hasn't been properly maintained. The connections work. Thus, the environment is ready. The code and the data, maybe not so much, but that's not what I'm supposed to be concerning myself about.

My favorite part was where I was accused of not taking ownership. That I had been, up to the end of March, but since then, not so much. Let's see. What happened that the end of March that might have made me think that getting the production environment working wasn't worth the effort? Oh, yeah, right, being told that we weren't going to production in April. Guess what? The environment hasn't changed at all. Everything that worked in March works now. Once again, it's not my environment that's failing, it's the code and the data, and I'm not going to be held responsible for that. Period.

05/01/2008

Tonight, I am taking Lotus for registration at school. Kindergarten. For me it was a big step, because I was at home with mom until then. Lotus has been going to daycare, and is excited to be going to kindergarten. I think she'll do really well.

For me, though, it'll be an adventure. Daycare, to me, is sort of like glorified babysitting. I know they teach her things there, and she gets a lot of socialization skills. But kindergarten is the first step on the road that will eventually lead my daughter to college, possibly in some other state, and then on to her own life in the bigger, wider, wonderful world. It's a long road, I know. But she's my first kid, so it's new for me, and, well, there are emotions involved.

I remember crying a lot my first day of kindergarten, because I didn't want to leave mommy. It had only been 6 months or so since my little sister had come in to the house, so I was still adjusting to the whole "not the most important thing anymore" syndrome that all first children have to go through. I went to preschool, but it was a co-op and Mom was there. And it wasn't for nearly as long as I was expected to be at kindergarten. Hours and hours! By the end of the first day, I was happy as a clam of course. And taking Lotus to registration will be a good thing for her, so she can learn about where the school is, in relation to our house, and where all the stuff like bathrooms are. I'm sure she'll be fine.